mysql - CakePHP 3 time column gets date added

Question

I have a number of columns defined in my MySQL database as "time". That is, they have a time, but not a date. When they are read by the CakePHP 3 ORM, they are being converted into CakeI18nTime objects (through the CakeDatabaseTypeTimeType class), but the result always has both a date and a time in it, with the date set to the current date. For example, if the value is "20:00:00", debug($record['start_time']) will generate:

object(CakeI18nTime) {
    'time' => '2015-06-21T20:00:00+0000',
    'timezone' => 'UTC',
    'fixedNowTime' => false
}

And when I echo it in a template (without having used setToStringFormat), I get something like 6/21/15 8:00 PM. Of course, I can use $this->Time->format to put it back into a time-only format, but it seems very strange that I would need to do so. Why is Cake ignoring the fact that this is just a time, and, more importantly, is there a way to make it stop?

Answer 1

Date/Time values are all being casted to the same base structure, that is a DateTime or DateTimeImmutable object, and so naturally date-only values will have a time value added (00:00:00), and time-only values come with a date (the current date).

CakePHP will uses specific subclasses depending on the SQL datatype, that is

• CakeI18nTime or CakeI18nFrozenTime for TIME, TIMESTAMP, and DATETIME
• CakeI18nDate or CakeI18nFrozenDate for DATE

In earlier CakePHP 3 versions there was only CakeI18nTime.

It would be nice if there would be a separate class for time-only types, which would have a proper time-only default output format set, but until something like that is added, you'll have to take care of the output format yourself.

Format in your views

It is up to you how to display this in your views. You can easily use the i18nFormat() method of the Time class instance

$record['start_time']->i18nFormat(
    [IntlDateFormatter::NONE, IntlDateFormatter::SHORT]
)

or the Time helper, to show only the time part

$this->Time->i18nFormat(
    $record['start_time'],
    [IntlDateFormatter::NONE, IntlDateFormatter::SHORT]
)

Guess it wouldn't hurt if bake would generate similar code according to the type of column, you may want to suggest that as an enhancement. As mentioned using additional classes (or maybe options) for time-only columns may be something worth to consider too.

Use a custom time class

If you'd wanted this behavior everywhere where the string representation of the object is being used, without having to manually invoke the formatter, then you could make use of an extended CakeI18nTime or CakeI18nFrozenTime class with an overriden $_toStringFormat property, so that it formats the date accordingly.

src/I18n/FrozenTimeOnly.php

namespace AppI18n;

use CakeI18nFrozenTime;

class FrozenTimeOnly extends FrozenTime
{
    protected static $_toStringFormat = [
        IntlDateFormatter::NONE,
        IntlDateFormatter::SHORT
    ];
}

src/config/bootstrap.php

use CakeDatabaseTypeTimeType;
use AppI18nFrozenTimeOnly;
TimeType::$dateTimeClass = FrozenTimeOnly::class;

// remove the default `useImmutable()` call, you may however
// want to keep further calls for formatting and stuff
Type::build('time'); 
// ...

This should pretty much self-explantory, time columns that are being mapped to TimeType, will now use AppI18nFrozenTimeOnly instead of the default CakeI18nTime.

DateTimeType::$dateTimeClass is deprecated

In order to cope with that, a custom database type will be required, which is rather simple too.

src/Database/Type/TimeOnlyType.php

namespace AppDatabaseType;

use AppI18nFrozenTimeOnly;
use CakeDatabaseTypeTimeType;

class TimeOnlyType extends TimeType
{
    public function __construct($name)
    {
        parent::__construct($name);
        $this->_setClassName(FrozenTimeOnly::class, DateTimeImmutable::class);
    }
}

It should be note that currently this will instantiate a data/time class twice, as the parent constructor will invoke _setClassName() too, which is where an instance of the given class will be instantiated.

src/config/bootstrap.php

use AppDatabaseTypeTimeOnlyType;
Type::map('time', TimeOnlyType::class);

So what this will do, is override the default time type mapping to use the custom AppDatabaseTypeTimeOnlyType class, which in turn will use the AppI18nTimeOnly class when converting database values to PHP objects, which when converted to a string, will use the time-only format.

See also

• Cookbook > Time > Setting the Default Locale and Format String
• Cookbook > Database Access & ORM > Database Basics > Adding Custom Types